Air Marshals

by Wynne, Marcus

  She was ready for a break.

  ***

  FRANKFURT, GERMANY:

  "What do you mean?" Jed said. "What have you got?"

  "Young Harold is on the ground, they should be coming up through Customs in about fifteen minutes. I'm not going to meet him on the plane, I'll meet him in Customs. You guys are going to want to hang back. The station manager got a telephone call asking when Harold's flight would be coming in. The caller asked for Harold by name on the manifest," George said.

  "By name, huh?" John said. "The boys from No Such Agency should have that number by now."

  "They do. A phone booth in the main train station," George said.

  "I'll get some people down there to lift prints," John said.

  "Good luck," George said. "Those phones are probably used over a hundred times a day. BND was down there on the earlier phone calls."

  "I'm going to hook up with my boys. You coming, Jed?" John said.

  "I'm going over to the Diner's Club Member's Lounge. When Charley and Nelson get in, have them meet me there in the back room, will you George?" Jed replied. "I'll call you on your cellular, John. You go ahead and take care of business. After the other two flights get in and get clear, let's link up and talk about how things go."

  "Roger that. See you later. George," John said.

  "That's a good man you got there, Jed," George observed. He lit up another cigarette. "Well, I'm going down and open up a can of whip-ass upside young Harold's head."

  "What about the one who lost his weapon?"

  "We would normally send his ass home, but we're so short bodies right now that I'm going to issue him a SIG out of our stash box and send a message out with the new serial number."

  "That's some silly shit, losing a weapon."

  "He's an idiot, but hey, shit happens, Jed. We've all had our days."

  "I hope this isn't one," Jed said.

  ***

  "The first phase has gone perfectly," Gamal Ayoush said to Ahmad Ajai. "Exactly as you said it would." The young man's voice was full of excitement and pride. This was the largest operation he'd ever participated in, and it was educational for him to see how an operation run with the full cooperation and support of a nation's intelligence and military assets could see. While the effort so far had required massive coordination and planning, everything had gone perfectly.

  Ahmad Ajai didn't show his pleasure; that would be out of character. He looked dispassionately at the younger man, who was practically hopping from foot to foot with excitement. The other members of the direct action hijacking squad were scattered throughout this nondescript house on the other side of Frankfurt from their warehouse training facility. Some were in the basement, napping on cots; others in a ready room, cleaning and preparing weapons; others relaxed in the recreation room, playing ping pong or watching TV. One was on duty in the communications room, watching CNN, the fax machine, two telephones and a portable computer.

  "Have you reviewed your part of the operation plan?" Ahmad Ajai asked.

  "Yes, many times. I am ready."

  "We still have time. Go over it again, so that you may be as proficient as the others have been so far."

  "Yes, of course," Ayoush said, visibly deflated. He wished to celebrate, to be excited with this leader and planner who was taking him on this mission. What an opportunity to rub the faces of the minions of the Great Satan in their own foolishness! Soon his hooded face and those of his teammates would be seen across the world, courtesy of CNN. He left the room quickly but quietly, so as not to disturb Ahmad Ajai.

  Ahmad Ajai returned to his thoughts. It was his custom, born of long habit and success with that habit, to visualize and imagine every twist and turning of a plan before and as he launched it. He could see the confusion, almost hear the voices, of the marshals and their supporting intelligence staff as they tried to make sense of the recent occurrences. His people had told him of the overwhelming presence in the Frankfurt airport today, the presence of armed men looking for him. Ahmad Ajai felt completely safe -- they were no where near him, and would not be. But this was only the beginning. There was more to come.

  ***

  "Have you enjoyed being an air marshal, Dyer?" George Baumgarner said. "Enjoyed all the fucking duty-free shopping you've done at the US government's expense over the last few years?"

  Dyer glared defiantly into George's face. "If you're going to send me home, give me the goddamn ticket. If you're going to write me up, do it. If you're not going to, then don't give me your bullshit, Baumgarner. I got enough grief without you adding to it."

  "No such luck, young Dyer," George said. "You're going to go down to the embassy, under the escort of your team leader here, and you're going to have a long talk on the STU with one Simon Dinkey, and then you're going to sign out one of my Sig-Sauer's, and your ass is going back on a plane and back to work. And if you lose that weapon, in addition to doing some prison time, I might have your ass kicked around the block ten or twenty times by some of my tame gorillas. You understand me, Dyer? You're not on probation, you're on motherfucking parole. So clean up your attitude."

  "Don't I get a chance to tell my side of the story?" Dyer whined.

  "Already did," George said. "And Mr. Harold, as for you..."

  "Same thing, right?" Harold said hopelessly.

  "Basically. You and Simon are going to have a telecon. At this point, for whatever reason, they are leaving you in charge. There was some talk about putting both of you on a plane back home, but we are too short of bodies, and we figure lightning won't strike in both places twice. After you get back from the embassy, hook up with Charley and Don and have a team meeting. You guys are on a war footing, so there won't be any partying or dinners out at the Basler Eck, you got that? Stick close to home, stay in the hotel, run full counter-surveillance, the whole nine yards, Harold. You're playing in the major leagues and you've already struck out once." George stuck another cigarette in his face. "Get out of my airport."

  "What about Shirleen and Ray?" Harold said.

  "Hey, team-leader, make a decision. Send them home to get some rest, since they've been carrying your ass, or make them tag along with you. Decide," George said mercilessly.

  "Fine, fine. Shirleen, you guys take off. We'll talk to you after we get back from the embassy. You heard George, hang tight at the hotel, eat in the restaurant there, watch your backs, whatever. We'll see you later," Harold said. His depression was obvious.

  "We'll see you later," Shirleen said. "Try to take it easy, Harold."

  Dyer snorted. "Easy for you to say."

  "Next time don't lose your gun," Ray snapped. "Let's go, Shirleen."

  "Fucking little asshole," Dyer said in surprise.

  "Shut up, Dyer," George said. "You make me sick."

  ***

  Two men from DOMINANCE RAIN followed Shirleen and Ray out of the terminal.

  "These people can't be too fucking serious," Rhino McGee said to his partner. "They're not even pretending to switch on."

  "They look beat."

  "That's a shitty job, air marshal. All that sitting around would drive me crazy. I hate flying."

  "You hate everything, Rhino. They got some good people in that program."

  "Not many. Seems pretty hit and miss, what I've seen so far. This is the problem with trying to get cops to do an operator's job. They're not being cops and they're not being operators. They're just being fucked up."

  "They've done some good shit," Rhino's partner said. He was a thin and wiry man whose work name was Spider. "A couple of those guys have carried us on the chem and bio interdiction stuff we working, into cargo and that. They've got two tiers and sometimes I don't think that they all know that."

  "It ain't official. It's just more of the old NCO network going on. Jedi Jed knows a couple of those guys from way back in the Nam, and it's just business as usual."

  The two men took the next cab in the cab-stand. "Frankfurt Marriott," Rhino said in fluent German. "How
about a bratwurst, Spider?"

  "Sounds good."

  ***

  Don looked up as the ground security coordinator came on board the almost empty aircraft. "Hello Dieter. Has Charley's flight come in yet?" he asked.

  "Yes, Don, they're two planes down. We can pick them up too," Dieter said.

  "Good." Don saw Ilona looking over her shoulder at him as she pulled her bags together. "Excuse me," he said to Dieter, who turned away with a grin. "Ilona..." Don said.

  "Yes, Mr. Don?"

  "We have a date, right? In DC, in two weeks?"

  "Yes, Mr. Don." Ilona smiled and looked at the flight attendants waiting for her. "I will bring something special to sleep in."

  "What will that be?"

  Ilona leaned forward and kissed Don in front of everyone. She whispered in his ear, "My skin. Good bye, beautiful man."

  She stepped carefully down the stairs, smiling.

  Don stood there with a huge grin on his face. "Lordy Jesus," he said. "Donald Gene is in love. Donald Gene is indeed in love."

  "What a fucking bastard," Butch groused. "Never fails. I'll never get a woman like that and I'm a nice guy. Fucking Nelson."

  "Your day will come, Butchie," Joan teased.

  "Yeah, right."

  "Let's go," Donald Gene said. The marshals followed him down the stairs to the crew bus where Dieter waited for them. Dieter pulled the bus away from their plane and down a row of parked planes to where Charley and his crew stood talking with a security guard posted outside their plane.

  "Hey sweetie, need a ride?" Don catcalled from the passenger seat.

  Charley and the others climbed in.

  Don turned asked Charley over the seat back. "You know how the Chinese say fuck you? May you live in interesting times."

  Charley slapped his partner on the shoulder. "I think they're going to get more interesting."

  "You got that part right."

  George Baumgarner waited for them beside the operations center door. He shook hands and brought the marshals through the doors, up a flight of stairs, and into the terminal.

  "Don, Charley, you guys should come with me. You might want to send your crew on ahead to the hotel. War footing, guys.," George said.

  "Stacy, take charge of getting everybody to the hotel. Stand by in your room for when we get back for a team meeting. I'm assuming that Harold is going to have one, right?" Charley said.

  "Young Harold is down at the embassy getting his ass reamed long distance. He'll be back eventually, along with Dyer," George said.

  Stacy led the crew of marshals out thorough the terminal. Don and George and Charley watched her go. George said, "Let's go see a friend," and led the two others up to the mezzanine level. In the Diners Club Members Lounge he took them through the front, where he waved casually at the receptionist, then into the back, where there were a series of conference rooms. In the far back conference room, Jed Loveless sat smoking with a cup of coffee and an overflowing ashtray on the table in front of him.

  "You don't look so bad," Jed said. "Want coffee?" he said, gesturing to the silver carafe on the table. "They make it pretty good up here."

  "What have you got, Jed?" Charley said.

  "An airport full of shooters and nobody to shoot. A whole bunch of disconnected leads that go nowhere."

  "Expand, please," Don said, pouring himself some coffee.

  "We've got this place covered bottom to top and side to side. There's not an asshole hair that can get through here without us knowing about it. Nothing. We had a call looking for young Harold from a cold phone in the train station. Nothing. Your dead man Hafiz...nothing. No ties to any body except his family, who said he had a job for the day in Stuttgart. Your two idiot boys got taken off in a bad neighborhood by a couple of unarmed guys who thought they were soldiers. Nothing developed out of that yet. We got nothing on any shooters in Rome; the pistol serial number tracks to a bunch sold to a gun store in Naples. Nothing on the bullets. Nothing to link all three incidents except for the obvious fact that three different sets of air marshals get tagged at the same time," Jed said. The fatigue was apparent in his voice, as well as in the rumpled clothes he wore.

  "What's the word from HQ, George?" Charley said.

  "Break contact, continue mission. Simon wants to talk to you two, telecon time at the embassy. I'll drive you down. Harold and Dyer are down there now, getting their asses chewed, and Dyer is getting one of my new Sig Sauers."

  "They're not sending him home?" Don said with disbelief.

  "We don't have anybody to take his place, Don. If it was up to me, I'd say fuck it and can his ass. You guys would be better off without him. But the powers that be -- idiot Crock and babbling Dinkey -- decree otherwise," George said. His frustration was apparent. "They made a point of insisting that Harold continue as team leader. Simon is concerned that having you replace him is going to send the wrong message to the troops."

  "It's irrelevant anyway," Don said. "We won't be working as a full team till we're on our repositioning flight out of here."

  "Whatever," Charley said impatiently. "What else, Jed?"

  "I've got some people on the ground in your end cities. I don't have enough for a full team for reception, but at least you'll have a couple of friendly faces in the crowd. We'll have a couple of people in reserve to send if we make anybody, but we're spread as thin as you guys are. Everything else has come to a halt while we put all assets onto this mission," Jed said. "What you see is what you get."

  "You want to get a drink, Jed?" Don said. "You look like you need one."

  "Maybe later, Don. I'll swing up to the hotel and have a drink with you boys. Right now I got to talk to my shooters and see what they're up to."

  "We'll talk to you later, Jed," Charley said. "Let's get out of here."

  ***

  They kept it short and sweet at the embassy. A brief, terse call to Dinkey to go over what had already been gone over. Some platitudes from Dinkey, who seemed subdued, and a long, silent ride back to the hotel in George's car with Dyer and Harold. The team was already assembled in Stacy's room when they got there; Butch had asked the concierge for a case of beer, and bottles were stacked on the floor around the room. George stood at the back of the room, his arms crossed. Charley and Don stood next to him. Harold went and sat dejectedly on the edge of the desk.

  "We all know what happened," Harold began. "There's still nothing from Intel to indicate exactly what's going on. From now on we're on a war footing. We stay in the hotel, eat in the hotel, go everywhere in buddy teams. Full trade craft measures at all times. Nobody travels alone. According to HQ, State Department is going to start picking us up at the airports in armored vans and escorting us to the hotels. In the end cities, we stay locked down. On the flights we've got to work even harder. We've got additional pre-board screeners working at all the US stations, but that doesn't mean somebody can't get past them. That's what we've got. It's going to be a hard two weeks, but we're going to have to suck it up. Any questions?"

  The marshals looked at each other. Several of them looked at Charley and Don, who stood impassively at the back of the room.

  "Yeah," Ray Rydell said. "How do I get off this fucked up team?"

  ***

  "It's the best I can do," Jed said. He sipped on his VO and Seven-up. "State Department will provide the vans and drivers, and a couple of gunfighters, Security guys. If they don't have the assets, the local station will provide a Security and Protection team."

  "I'd rather have the SPOS," Don said, referring to the CIA's Security and Protective Officers.

  "We don't have many to go around. There's some good guys with State Security. Isn't that where Paulson came from?" Jed said.

  "He's the exception that proves the rule," Charley said dryly. "You sure you're not dangling us, Jed?"

  "It might work out like that," Jed said. "Johnny B's boys are champing at the bit to snatch this Ahmad Ajai or anyone of his people. It doesn't look like it will take place
here. If at all, it'll be either Istanbul or Athens. My money is on Athens."

  "Why?" Charley said.

  "Easy access, lots of infrastructure, laissez faire police, at least as far as official Americans go. You'd get more aggressive investigation if you were tourists. Good land routes, but better sea routes."

  "Sea routes?" Don said.

  "If they were going to snatch somebody. I don't see why they would want to take a marshal, though. If our guys snatch one, we can get them out anywhere."

  "I think they're just fucking with us," Charley said.

  "I'm starting to think that, too," Jed said. "It seems more like a harassment campaign, like when Victor Charley used to throw a mortar round at random into a compound. Gets us all stirred up, we show everything we've got, we get tired and wore out. Psychological war of attrition. They are probably throwing red herring at us while they get ready to hit the Kuwaitis or the Brits or somebody else."

  "Speaking of Brits, how's Lusty doing?"

  "Great. He's been a help to us down in Beirut. Officially, we're supposed to be handling that on our own. As you might guess, we're shaking every tree for whatever help we can get. Lusty's got great networks set up down there, old ones."

  "Send him my best," Charley said. "Tell him I'm thinking of him."

  "Will do," Jed said. "Will do."

  ***

  The marshals settled into a grueling and tiresome regimen for the next two weeks. Confined to their hotels during their layovers and overnights, they took turns patrolling the hotel lobbies and hallways, looking for suspicious faces. The faces from DOMINANCE RAIN became familiar ones to the marshals. The trips from the hotels to the airport were convoys in miniature, when they loaded into vanilla white embassy vans with burly drivers and gunfighters in bad suits. Their walks through the airport terminals were as tense as a passage of lines had been for the few combat veterans left on the marshal teams.

  All the tension, and the lack of any outlets other than TV or drinking, led to an accelerated break down in team integrity. Minor personality clashes became major. People began to withdraw into themselves and become irritable and angry over small things. Their sleep patterns became disturbed. The growing exhaustion showed on the faces of the marshals.